Michigan a Testing Ground for Doubt on Romney

Supporters of Rick Santorum on Monday at a rally at the Lexington Lansing Hotel in Michigan.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — The Michigan presidential primary on Tuesday offers Rick Santorum — and skeptical conservatives — the best chance yet to turn nagging questions about Mitt Romney into deep doubts about his candidacy.

His defeat could send the nominating fight onto an unpredictable path and reset the Republican race.

But a victory here for Mr. Romney, along with one in the Arizona primary the same day, could help cool the misgivings that some Republicans have raised about him — just in time for a challenging run of Super Tuesday contests next week that will allow another wave of voters to render judgment.

The Republican nominating contest, now entering its third month, remains alive with uncertainty. On Monday came word that Newt Gingrich had received another major infusion of support from Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and his chief benefactor, to help pay for advertising in seven states.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who has devoted most of his time organizing for a coming round of caucuses, drew large crowds to rallies in Michigan on the eve of the primary here. And as the race becomes a fight for delegates, Mr. Santorum has a few million dollars on hand, aides said, and a growing team of 20 new aides and a volunteer director already at work on the March 13 Hawaii caucuses.

The Santorum campaign, newly emboldened in its head-to-head confrontation here with Mr. Romney, sent Democrats telephone messages on Monday, reminding them that they, too, can vote in Michigan’s primary. The outcome of the race — and any last-minute mischief — will provide a compass for the rest of the Republican nominating contest.

“We took it to him in his home state,” said Michael Biundo, the campaign manager for Mr. Santorum. “Either way we end up here, we’re winners.”

At a Chamber of Commerce breakfast on Monday, Mr. Santorum was surrounded by Secret Service agents for the first time. He argued that Mr. Romney was “uniquely unqualified” to defeat President Obama because of the health care plan he signed as governor of Massachusetts. “Why would we give this issue away?” Mr. Santorum declared. “It is the biggest issue in this race.”

Mr. Romney showed signs of confidence as he breezed onto the stage at the Royal Oak Music Theater on Monday night after a full day of campaigning. He presented himself as the best-equipped candidate to run on the economy, but still devoted much of his time during the day to Mr. Santorum, rather than his preferred target, Mr. Obama.

“Whoever wins Michigan won’t get that many more delegates,” G. Scott Romney, the candidate’s older brother and a Detroit lawyer, said in an interview. “But it has a momentum effect as we keep going on to the next several states.”

Here is a look at some of the dynamics that will be in play on Tuesday as Republicans vote in Michigan and Arizona, as well as the consequences beyond those contests as the presidential race heads into March.

Every Which Way He Can

Here in Michigan, Mr. Santorum has taken on Mr. Romney’s former role. Where Mr. Romney won in Michigan four years ago by portraying himself as the conservative alternative to Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Santorum now holds that title in relation to Mr. Romney.

And Mr. Santorum has attacked Mr. Romney as a lesser conservative on several fronts, including his support for an individual mandate for health insurance in Massachusetts and, as governor, for emission limits at some state power plants.

Photo

Rick Santorum, who spoke on Monday in Livonia, Mich., has mounted a strong challenge to Mitt Romney in the state.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Mr. Santorum has made appeals to religious voters in ways that Mr. Romney, who supported abortion rights until 2005, cannot, stressing his opposition to abortion and the fact that he is a Roman Catholic who home-schools his children.

Mr. Romney has succeeded in piercing Mr. Santorum’s conservative credentials by repeatedly pressing him for his own comments in last week’s debate, in which he said he had voted against his own principles out of party loyalty to “take one for the team.”

And some of Mr. Santorum’s more provocative comments on religion have not helped, including his warning in 2008 — publicized heavily last week by the Drudge Report— that Satan had “set his sights on the United States of America.”

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Speaking of the Satan comment at a rally for Mr. Santorum in Arizona last week, a supporter, Cheryl Rosado, 30, said it made her wonder if Mr. Romney would fare better in the fall. Though she agreed with the warning, she said, “I wouldn’t say it at work.”

Blue-Collar Bounce

For all the talk about Mr. Santorum’s position on social issues, he is also aggressively pushing to win over blue-collar workers here, including Democrats who are allowed to vote in the state’s open primary on Tuesday and could make a critical difference if the race is as tight as polls suggest.

The campaign has taken the extraordinary step of placing automated telephone calls to Democratic households, telling them, “Michigan Democrats can vote in the Republican primary.” The message adds an item of local interest, saying: “Romney supported the bailouts for his Wall Street billionaire buddies but opposed the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and we’re not going to let Romney get away with it.”

Here in Michigan, where the term “Reagan Democrat” was born because of those who voted for Ronald Reagan in the counties outside Detroit, Mr. Santorum told voters that he could repeat Mr. Reagan’s success — with their help — here and in other manufacturing states, chief among them Ohio next week.

There is one hitch: Mr. Santorum opposed the auto bailout as well.

“I know that’s not a popular topic here in Detroit, but at least I’m consistent,” Mr. Santorum told a crowd on Monday, reminding Republicans that he opposed the federal bailout of Wall Street, unlike Mr. Romney.

He also has been quick to play up his own working-class roots as the grandson of a coal miner who grew up in the steel-producing area of Pennsylvania, a sharp contrast with his rival, who has stumbled with talk of owning several Cadillacs and, on Sunday, as he visited the Daytona 500, declared. “I have some great friends who are Nascar team owners.”

Twice Mr. Gingrich has been counted out of the Republican race, and twice he has come back. Now, he is vowing to stage another surge, and none of his remaining rivals is going to make the mistake of prematurely writing him off again.

Mr. Gingrich decided against competing in Michigan in any real way, a nod to his own low poll numbers in the state. But that also had the added benefit of allowing Mr. Santorum to coalesce the anti-Romney vote for maximum effect.

While Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum were attacking each other, with Mr. Paul spending his time in states with upcoming caucuses, Mr. Gingrich had the Super Tuesday state of Tennessee to himself on Monday, where he appeared alongside Fred D. Thompson, the state’s former Republican senator and a popular actor.

Polls already show Mr. Gingrich competing strongly next week in Georgia, where he hopes to begin building his next comeback, and, with help from his newly rejuvenated “super PAC,” in other Southern states as well, including Mississippi and Alabama. With the injection of new money from Mr. Adelson, the super PAC will begin a $1.7 million television advertising campaign on Wednesday.

“The same media which said I was dead in the fall, I was ahead in December, I was dead in early January, I was ahead in mid-January, all of the sudden some of them are going to say,” Mr. Gingrich said Monday. “Gingrich will be back again.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 28, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Michigan a Testing Ground for Doubt on Romney. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe